Update: Apple to live stream it’s own media event tomorrow (9/1/10). Tune into www.apple.com at 10 AM PDT. It looks like non-Apple devices won’t be able to watch. See the press release from Apple here.

Apple is holding a media event on 9/1/10 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, CA

There are several well placed rumors that Apple with be announcing several new items.

Most widely speculated is the Apple TV. A next generation Apple TV based on the same OS as the iPhone, in order to provide support for Apps on your TV. Rumored to be priced at just $99.

This turned out to be true, however it does not run iOS. It appears to pretty much the same as the old Apple TV which has a Front Row type of interface. Apple TV is now available for pre-order from Apple and will ship in about a month. It’s 1/4th the size of the old Apple TV and is based on a streaming data model, as it has no internal hard drive. You can rent movies and TV shows on it from iTunes, or you can stream music, video, and photos from your home computer.

Another pretty hot rumor concerns a redesign of the iPod nano that appears to have some backing from both some photographic and released protective case design evidence. It would appear that the new Nano will be smaller, square shaped designed device with a 3cm x 3cm touch screen.

This also turned out to be true. The new nano has a touch screen that is large enough to show four app style icons at one. It will be shipping from Apple in about a week.

Back to the rumor mill again after leaked photos showing a camera have popped up over the last year or so is the iPod touch. It’s new design looks to include both a back side camera and a front facing camera, microphone, updated footprint, possible 3G and even a Retina display as in the iPhone 4.

Again, also 100% true. The new iPod touch support Face Time and does have now include the Retina LCD, which is the same LCD that is in the iPhone 4. The iPod touch will also be shipping in about a week.

There also has been quite a bit of buzz concerning Apple’s desire to rent TV shows for 99 cents. I’m assuming that this will also include some tweaks to iTunes and the Apple iTunes store.

This also turned out to be true. TV shows can be rented from ABC and FOX for 99 cents and iTunes 10 was released as well to support this. Apple also announced Ping a new music based social networking site inside of iTunes where you can follow popular artists like Lady GaGa, U2, Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry.

You can watch the full event video from Apple’s own website here.

Due to our hugely successful iPod and iPhone repair programs, MacMedics is please to announce that we are now offering Apple iPad Repairs as well.

iPad Glass repairs are $199. If you’re a Facebook fan you can take $10 off.

Questions? Give us a call at 1-866-MAC-MEDICS or stop by our Millersville, Maryland office to drop off your broken Macintosh, iPhone, iPod, or iPad. We’re the only company in Maryland that fixes all Apple devices.

Reminder: MacMedics is an Apple Authorized Service Provider, and we can service your Macintosh computer that is under Apple’s Limited Warranty or AppleCare. iPhones, iPods, and iPads that are under warranty need to be serviced at the Apple Store or mailed back to Apple.

As Apple quickly picks up more and more dedicated Apple users, the Apple Store and their retail service offerings are frequently overloaded. MacMedics is often able to complete Apple Limited Warranty and AppleCare repairs in as little as 24 hours. See our posting on this topic here.

In the meantime we continue to collect excellent reviews from the anonymous Apple Service surveys as well as from Google and Yelp.

Here’s our most recent review from our client, Evan:

“I Had the toplid of my MacBook Pro replaced under warranty. Was effortless, they diagnosed it properly and gave me the time of day. The whole staff was very friendly and accommodating and the store was near empty, which is a welcome change from the busy and annoying Apple Stores and their notorious “Genius” Bar service in the back. Highly recommended!‎”

Thanks to friend of MacMedics, Mario Armstrong for inviting Dana Stibolt, Owner and Founder of MacMedics onto The Mario Armstrong on XM Radio channel 169 last week.

It was a fun talk about a really serious subject. The majority of the radio visit was focused on the MacMedics 5 Rules of Data Preservation and Protection, which can be reviewed at our web page, http://www.HardDrivesDie.com.

You can listen to the segment here. If you’d like to download the MP3 file and listen to it in iTunes, just hold down “Option” and click the link to download the file.

The interview starts at 7:45 into the recording.

Apple today released Safari 5.0.1 to enable Safari Extensions for all users and introduced the Safari Extensions Gallery so they can quickly find and download extensions. Safari is available for both Mac and Windows.

Safari Extensions are created by third-party developers and add powerful new features to the browser, from toolbars that display live web feeds to sophisticated programs that filter web page content.

The Safari Extensions Gallery is accessible from the Safari menu or at http://extensions.apple.com. Users can download and install extensions with a single click, and there’s no need to restart the browser.

Use Software Update to download version 5.0.1.

For more information about Safari, go to http://www.apple.com/safari.

To view the Safari Extension Gallery, go to http://extensions.apple.com.

Apple released a new line up of iMacs and Mac Pros today. They also announced a new 27″ LED Cinema Display and a very interesting looking “Magic Trackpad”.

New Mac Pro

Thanks to the next-generation Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processors and new system architecture, the Mac Pro now delivers performance that’s nearly twice as fast as before. Each processor features an integrated memory controller and 8MB of fully shared L3 cache. The NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory provides up to 2.9x the performance of previous Mac Pro standard graphics cards. For even more graphics power, choose the ATI Radeon HD 4870 with 512MB of GDDR5 memory. With blazing-fast 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM, high-performance graphics, a redesigned interior for easier expansion, and up to 8TB of internal storage, itʼs the most advanced Mac Pro ever.

Features

• 8-core or quad-core processing power with Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processors up to
3.33GHz
• 8MB of fully shared L3 cache per processor
• Integrated memory controller and up to 32GB of 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM (16GB in quadcore configurations)
• Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
• Hyper-Threading for up to 16 virtual cores
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 or ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics and a double-wide PCI Express 2.0 graphics slot
• Up to 8TB of internal storage with up to four Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drives2
• Optional Mac Pro RAID Card providing hardware RAID levels 0, 1, 5, and 0+1
• Three full-length PCI Express 2.0 expansion slots for specialized cards
• Convenient front and rear I/O and dual Gigabit Ethernet ports for connecting a variety of devices
• Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad and Apple Mouse
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Fully customizable with an innovative enclosure that supports future expansion

New iMacs

The new iMac is the ultimate all-in-one computer. Its Intel Core i3, i5, and i7 processors feature an advanced architecture and set new benchmarks for iMac performance. And fast discrete graphics processors now come standard in every iMac. The 21.5-inch and 27-inch widescreen displays are perfect for HD video, and the Apple Wireless Keyboard and Magic Mouse keep your desktop tidy.

Features

• 21.5-inch display with 1920-by-1080 resolution; 27-inch display with 2560-by-1440 resolution
• Dual-core Intel Core i3 and i5 processors up to 3.6GHz
• Available quad-core Intel Core i5 and i7 processors up to 2.93GHz (27-inch model only)
• ATI Radeon HD 4670, ATI Radeon HD 5670, or ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics
• Wireless Magic Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard
• Built-in iSight camera, stereo speakers, and microphone
• Built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n Wi-Fi1 and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

Magic Trackpad

The new Magic Trackpad is the first Multi-Touch trackpad designed to work with your Mac desktop computer. It uses the same Multi-Touch technology you love on the MacBook Pro. And it supports a full set of gestures, giving you a whole new way to control and interact with what’s on your screen. Swiping through pages online feels just like flipping through pages in a book or magazine. And inertial scrolling makes moving up and down a page more natural than ever. Magic Trackpad connects to your Mac via Bluetooth wireless technology. Use it in place of a mouse or in conjunction with one on any Mac computer — even a notebook.

New 27″ LED Cinema Display

Connect your Mac with Mini DisplayPort to the LED Cinema Display for a panoramic viewing experience unlike any other. You get a huge 27-inch glossy widescreen display with a cinematic 16:9 aspect ratio and an astonishing 2560-by-1440 resolution. With 60 percent more pixels than the 24-inch LED Cinema Display, the 27-inch LED Cinema Display gives you even more room for all your windows and applications.
Unlike most displays that take time to warm up before they reach maximum brightness, an LED-backlit display is instantly on and uniformly bright. LED backlighting also gives you greater control over screen brightness. So you can tune the LED Cinema Display to suit the ambient light in even the dimmest room.

Lots of places that offer nationwide Macintosh, iPhone, or iPod service will try to you lure you to their website by saturating their webpage with geographic keywords that make it appear that they are “in” your area.

If you’re looking for “local” Macintosh, iPhone, or iPod service or repair that’s really local to the Baltimore, Maryland or Washington DC areas, then you’ve found the right place.

MacMedics has been repairing Macintosh computers in Maryland since 1989.

When you’re looking for local Mac, iPhone, iPod, or even iPad service from a reputable service provider, come see us at MacMedics.

Thinking about going to the Apple Store for service? Our service is faster, usually less expensive, and carries our full MacMedics 1-year service warranty. See our Blog post about that here. The majority of our our Apple warranty repairs are complete and ready to return to you within 24 hours. Need a rental while your unit is in the shop? We can do that too!

Be sure to see our Blog post on why shipping your broken Mac or iPhone off to parts unknown is something that you should really think twice about.

My 30-second elevator pitch has evolved to include ATM repairs.

So someone in the elevator will see my MacMedics jacket, shirt, or tool bag and asks, “What exactly is MacMedics?”

I say, “MacMedics is an Apple Authorized Macintosh service and consulting business. We service and maintain Macs at ad agencies and other places where pre-press and graphic design happens like corporate graphics or marketing departments. We like to say we’re in the ATM repair business, because when your Mac is broken or slow, you’re not making money.”

I got a huge dose of this wisdom this recently. A guy who lives and works near our shop has a video production business. He’s been asking about maybe getting a new Mac for the last year or so.

We exchange e-mails every so often when he has a question about his Mac or to ask if we need any video production help. I saw him at Subway not too long ago and he let me know that he might be getting a new Mac soon.

He came into the shop with his older MacBook Pro that was really sick. He had tried to run a Firmware update while he was in the middle of a project and it failed, thus making the unit inoperable. It’s not a common occurrence, but we do see it from time to time. As soon as it happened he ordered a new MacBook Pro from somewhere else, and then brought that in so we could transfer his data from the old unit to the new unit. Sadly, we could have saved him even more time if he had purchased the new Mac from MacMedics.

Normally this is not a big deal. We set it up the new MacBook Pro to migrate and it failed about 75% of the way thru. We tried a few other things and tried again, and it failed a second time. We then began to suspect the drive might be failing as it was getting kind of noisy and it was getting pretty hot as well.

I decided to go ahead and clone the drive on our data recovery equipment, so I could copy the data off the drive quickly. I then had to fix that data in order to get it into to shape to migrate it. His hard drive was a huge mess. The report on the drive was seven pages long! The total process ended up taking several hours and it delayed him over 24 hours from the point where his old unit blew up.

So, he’s a professional guy who makes his living with this MacBook Pro, and he had no back up, and he’s never had the unit serviced or looked at. This MacBook Pro is really his ATM cash machine as it provides him with all of his bread and butter for his business.

This is a fantastic case study in why a little preventive maintenance goes along way. If you treat your Mac like your very own ATM machine, you’ll never have these problems. Let’s get real here? Are you going to let your ATM degrade to a point where it stops dispensing cash.

1. This client’s MacBook Pro is well over two years old, so if we had seen it at any point recently, we would have most likely replaced the unit’s hard drive proactively and serviced the unit.

4. A little bit of annual maintenance and an automatic and tested back up system pay for themselves very quickly.

We’re friendly with this fellow, so if had stopped and called us on the phone, we would have been able to tell him all of this. We love to talk shop. If you have questions about how to treat your Mac like your very own ATM machine, just pick up the phone and give us a call!

As Apple Authorized Service Providers, we perform quite a number of Macintosh warranty repairs on behalf of Apple’s customers. We also do so for many of our own customers whom have purchased their Apple gear from MacMedics.

Over the last six months or so, our Apple service business has basically doubled. The Apple Stores in the area are so overwhelmed; many Apple owners are finding out that there is an alternative to making an appointment or waiting around in the mall for a face-to-face with a Genius at the Genius Bar. See our recently updated Blog post on why it makes sense to come visit MacMedics in either Lanham (1 mile from I-495 at RT 50) or Millersville (5 minutes from BWI Airport or 10 minutes form the Annapolis Mall)

When we perform an Apple Warranty or AppleCare repair for someone, Apple sends them a survey to ask how well we performed the service on Apple’s behalf.

Apple then forwards these remarks and the accompanying scores to us with the idea that they will help improve our service.

In the latest round feedback from Apple, these anonymous comments praise MacMedics in such a level of detail it almost looks like we wrote them ourselves.

These are direct from Apple, and we’d like to thank our loyal customers for supporting us. THANKS!

-Very customer focused.

-Matt at Mac Medics knew right away how to resolve my problem.

Stop by MacMedics Millersville and have your iPhone 3G or 3G S serviced while-you-wait, in about 10 minutes!

For $124.95 the expert techs at MacMedics will replace the entire top half of your iPhone 3G. This includes your glass/digitizer, home button, LCD, and frame. For $145.95 We’ll do the same for your iPhone 3G S. Don’t be fooled by “counterfeit” parts from the Internet. These parts are the real deal and carry our hassle-free 1-year warranty.

We still offer our “standard” same-day drop off iPhone 3G for $89.95 AND iPhone 3G S for 99.95 glass/digitizer service! Drop it off by 10:00 AM and we’ll have it done by 4:00 in most cases.

MacMedics only uses factory original parts and all repairs include a 1-year warranty.

Stop by anytime before 4:30 and we’ll fix your iPhone 3G or iPhone 3G S while-you-wait!

“Like” us on Facebook, while you are in the office dropping off your unit, and we’ll take $10 off your “while-you-wait” OR “same-day” iPhone repair.

Ask about our referral program! Refer 10 of your friends for iPhone, iPod, or Macintosh repairs, and we’ll refund your entire iPhone glass repair back to you via PayPal. We’ll give you a unique repair number when you have MacMedics fix your iPhone or iPod. Just post that number to your Facebook page or Twitter, and we’ll keep track of how many of your friends come in. If you refer 10 friends within 1-year of your repair, then we’ll send your repair fee back (just the repair fee and not shipping costs if you mailed your unit into us).